One Room Challenge - Week 2: The Reality of Project Plans and Skim Coating

 
 

Hi Friends! If you haven’t had a chance to see my plans yet for the One Room Challenge, check out my blog post from last week, Week 1: Guest Bedroom Planning.

Renovations, especially in the DIY fashion are unruly. Most of the time I have never done the task I am taking on before, or even if I have every room comes with a different set of problems.

In older homes you might experience setbacks like my fellow One Room Challenger, Mel Makes a Mess who has in this short time, non-stop impressed me with how many challenges and pivots she has made while completely overhauling her bathroom.

If you want to feel inspired, go watch her highlight reel on Instagram of progress so far, where she constantly solutions through challenges like discovering more damage to walls than expected (holes patched with concrete!), smoke damage requiring extensive cleaning, and a few other hiccups along the way due to old house stuff.

This is where having some idea of your project plan comes in handy, you know what a setback means and how you can manage the other impacted tasks. Most of this time it just means that earlier on in the process I put in a couple longer days than I had planned to make back up the time. Otherwise, every setback pushes me into the final hours before a deadline.

The reality is, until you demo or get started you may not know how long something will take, how you will fix the problem, or what original plans are in jeopardy. Keep reading if you want some reasonable methods for project managing your room renovation and see where i’m at with my current renovations.

Project Managing Home Renovations

I tried to become a Project Manager at my last job. I did the homework, got the certification, and I was already a Project Administrator. However, there were many elements of the job that did not jive with who I am at my core.

Essentially, I do everything last minute. I also have ADD.

As one of those people who has convinced myself I do better work under pressure - there is only one date on a project schedule that matters to me: a due date.

Breaking up the task of renovating a room in 6-weeks requires that I give myself MANY deadlines throughout, manage my work pipeline realistically and constantly re-evaluate my schedule as my plans change. Here’s how I do that:

  1. Determine major bodies of work required for my final vision (ex: Gathering Materials, Renovations, DIY Projects, Assembly, Styling)

  2. Break those bodies of work into simple tasks and assigning an approximate duration for that task

  3. Create a “work back” schedule from my final deadline to create deadlines for the sub-tasks that considers dependencies
    For example, take into account when can or will purchase materials, when they will arrive and how long something takes to dry or set between coats

  4. Document the plan
    I do this in Trello, watch my video to learn how. I made my Trello Board public so you can see how I am managing this project.

  5. Check-in with my project plan to record progress
    I do this at least once a week on a predictable day, but when things get a little hairy and renovations are taking longer than expected - I do this more often. Ultimately this gives me a chance to move things around and figure out exactly how I can work the slow downs into my schedule.

  6. Re-evaluate and accommodate changing needs and requirements
    This is where I was this week when I added a couple seemingly small renovation elements into my project plan.

The renovation rundown

As a review from last week’s post, the renovation plan is to create a modern, updated canvas with:

  • Freshly skim-coated walls with a level-5 finish because girl likes her walls smooth

  • New addition since last week: Skim-coat, Prime and Wallpaper “Cloffice”

  • Fresh prime and paint

  • Wallpaper accent wall

  • Luxury vinyl plank floors replacing carpet

  • Updated fixtures including the ceiling fan, window dressings, hardware and lighting

New additions since last week:

  • Remove partial shelving and bars from the closet and patch walls

  • Skim-coat, Prime and Wallpaper “Cloffice”


The “cloffice” aka the source of my scope creep

You guessed it folks, I am still working my way through the first task, and before moving on to priming and painting my walls I have added my 20 square-foot cloffice to the list of spaces that needed a couple days of renovation into my project schedule. Even though it was a small space, simple tasks are the most deceiving.

There was no way to cleanly remove very nailed, very sturdy shelving without causing some damage to the walls, requiring patching/drying before moving on to skim-coating. Skimming a 120 square foot total wall space sounds easy in theory but all the nooks and crannies were harder to maneuver and the walls were very uneven in comparison to the main space.

The next few days will be a push to make up for lost time so that I can get my walls primed this weekend. With my flooring shipment coming in next week, my goal that keeps a pretty comfortable schedule would be to have my walls complete by the time we install the flooring.

So, seriously all you did

was skim-coat this week?

Yes, because I’m going to be real with you that I didn’t push myself hard this week and felt like I needed a slower pace. On the side I am still moving some other important tasks to the done list:

 
 

  • Continuing to “hunt and gather” smaller detail pieces for the room

  • Purchased most of my remaining supplies needed for my DIY projects

  • Spent a lot of time thinking about whether Ive selected the right color green for my walls: I am still stuck on Matcha Latte vs. Avocado Toast from Clare paint


It is both motivating and terrifying to see that amazing progress being made by the Guest Participants and the Featured Designers. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the rest of the One Room Challenge, do not delay. It is so fun to watch the process instead of over simplified before and after photos.

Curious about anything i’m working on or want to share your own projects? Reach out to me on Instagram, I love to chat! @mid_centurymillennial

Home, ORCMegan Housekeeperhome renovations, home DIY, Skim Coating, Project Plan Room MakeoverComment